Caleb Redshaw

Math and physics are what most attracted Caleb Redshaw’s interest as young student. He saw mechanical engineering simply as “the perfect way to apply them in a more tangible way.”

But Redshaw says he found himself “surprised by how broad mechanical engineering can be and how much room there is to specialize in different areas. I ended up focusing a lot of my courses on fluid mechanics, which I had hardly even considered as an option.”

Upon graduation, Redshaw will continue his studies to earn an advanced degree in the field in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering 4+1 accelerated master’s degree program.

His initial attraction to math and physics have since evolved into an aspiration for an engineering career in space technology design.

“I would love to be a part of a team that designs a future flagship space telescope,” Redshaw says.

His coursework in areas relevant to his goals has been enhanced by learning experiences outside the classroom.

For more than two years, Redshaw worked on the Circuit Tutor project under Brian Skromme, a Fulton Schools professor of electrical engineering who teaches solid-state electronics. The ongoing project involves developing software for circuit analysis education used in introductory circuits courses at ASU.

“This gave me my first real programming experience, as well as my first exposure to research,” he says, adding that “it was always interesting to hear the reactions from my friends taking the circuits course when I told them I worked on the software they used for their homework.”

Redshaw also completed a NASA Space Grant internship under Rogier Windhorst, an ASU Regents Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration, and was on an ASU Formula SAE team that participated in an SAE International student competition to design and manufacture high-performance racecars.

Opportunities to get interdisciplinary research experience “helped steer me into a focus on astrophysics and space technology that has become my career plan,” he says.

Redshaw made the dean’s list in each semester of his undergraduate years and has been supported in his studies by a New American University National Merit Scholarship, in addition to the NASA Space Grant.

What has been most valuable about his college education, he says, are the insights he’s gained from professors in the Fulton Schools and the School of Earth and Space Exploration “and the way they’ve all shaped my perceptions about what goes into being a mechanical engineer.”

The experiences Redshaw says he will remember most are those moments of elation when the answer to an engineering problem or the solution that makes a project successful “finally clicks into place and works out.”

Read about other exceptional graduates of the Fulton Schools’ Spring 2022 class here.